It is known that storing food items in an environment evacuated of air will help preserve and prolong the freshness of those items. To accomplish this, the food items may be placed in an internal volume of a rigid container which is then sealed and air trapped in the internal volume is removed. To enable evacuation of the internal volume, the container may include a one-way valve element communicating with the internal volume. The one-way valve element allows for the evacuation of trapped air while preventing the ingress of the surrounding environmental air into the interior volume thereby preserving the evacuated state.
A variety of different evacuation devices have been employed for actually evacuating air through the one-way valve element. Examples of such evacuation devices include hand operated pumps in which continuous hand manipulation is required to provide the pumping action. Other evacuation devices may be electrically activated and may be configured as either counter-top designs or as hand-held designs. Desirably, such electrical evacuation devices should operate smoothly and quietly and, when configured as hand-held devices, should be sufficiently lightweight and compact.